'He simply and innocently blew journalism apart'

Matthew Engel first bumped into Frank Keating one summer's day in Northamptonshire. For much of the 30 years since he has been a friend, colleague and, most of all, an admirer. 'He was at once evocative, nostalgic and very, very fresh'

It must have been the summer of 1974 or thereabouts. I was the cricket correspondent of the Northampton Chronicle and Echo; Northamptonshire were right up there contending for the County Championship and our rickety press box was honoured by a large turnout from Fleet Street, including this charming, rather fey, young man from the Guardian, who was already making a name for himself as a wordsmith of unusual gifts.

He was slow finishing his piece: clearly words like his needed longer to prepare than anyone else's. So I stood with my local colleague, Fred Speakman, at the back of the box discussing when we might to best advantage print the pathetic little local snippets of news we had obtained.

Had anyone else been around we would have whispered, but surely no one as grand as Mr Keating, sitting there polishing his polysyllables, would be interested in our nonsense about Mushtaq Mohammad's hamstring or maybe it was David Steele's groin.

That was what I assumed until the following morning, when I picked up my Guardian. I don't think it was billed as "Another Frank Keating World Exclusive", but it was just that: the state of Mushy's hammy revealed, the Chronicle and Echo scooped in its own backyard.

Personally I learned a lot from that - about journalism, about the Guardian ("Comment is free but facts are normally expensive," as CP Scott almost said) and, above all, about Frank himself. In the intervening three decades, in which time Frank has become my friend, neighbour, mentor and inspiration, I have never again made the mistake of under-estimating the bastard.

We all trust Frank's retirement is a technicality and that he will continue to write for the pages he has graced all these years. But this is a big, sad moment for Guardian sport. Within a few months two of the greatest sports journalists Fleet Street has ever seen - first David Lacey, now Frank - have left the staff.

They were a contrasting pair, and they led these pages' journalistic attack for a generation. There was Lacey from one end: perfect line and length every time. Keating was more like Ian Botham. Sometimes he would bowl a couple of journalistic long-hops. But when he was on form, he was amazing.

Those amazing days transformed the craft of sports journalism in this country. In the early 1970s sports reporting in the posher papers had changed little since the days of Corinthian amateurism. A fair amount of guff passed for fine writing on the basis of magisterial judgments laced with an occasional classical quote, apposite or not.

Given his head by an innovative and imaginative sports editor, John Samuel, Frank simply and innocently blew it all apart. He had his own unique style; his writing just fizzed with analogies and adjectives, some of them in the dictionary. It was at once evocative, nostalgic and very, very fresh.

He also had (and has) an unusually wide range. Very few journalists, even those paid to be generalists, are strong on all the major sports. The worst sort bluff harder the less they know. Frank never pretended to be a technical expert on anything much. He just liked games and it shone through everything he wrote.

The best of it came when he was most passionate. That could be about his loves - Gloucestershire cricket, Fulham football, French rugby. But at the same time there was no one more hilariously withering about the bad days: the 1986 Commonwealth Games, for instance (the Robert Maxwell fiasco), or the dreadful Centenary Test at Lord's in 1980.

He could make readers laugh; he could make them cry. Sometimes, as when he eulogised Ken Barrington from Barbados after his sudden death on tour there in 1981, he could perform both tricks simultaneously.

But there was also the matter of what these days get called "people skills". Sportsmen who would refuse to give the time of day to other hacks ate out of Frank's hand. It was his Irish/West Country little-boy-lost manner, I think, and the "m'dears" that laced his conversation, that did it: plus his wonderful mix of priest-manqué and roué.

Like us in Northampton they didn't take him seriously as a real journalist. Since they generally kept talking to him even after he'd written about them we have to assume that, even if he trussed them up in print and had them skewered, roasted and carved, the process was conducted with such gentle elegance they never even noticed.

The feeling was mutual. The columnist Alan Watkins once noted that political journalists have to pretend to hate politicians but actually rather like them whereas sports writers really loathe sportsmen but dare not admit it. Frank really does like sportsmen. Indeed he likes everyone (or he convincingly pretends to, which comes to the same thing). In the bar he might be talking about the latest outrage of the surliest brute imaginable, and would always end the story with: "For all that, I do love him." "Mike Tyson?" he might say. "Oh, he's a dear."

These same qualities made him father confessor to generations of Fleet Street hacks, who still habitually ring Frank to discuss their personal and professional traumas. And they led to the most important relationship of all, with Guardian readers.

With Frank as its presiding genius the Guardian sports pages constituted a sort of club. Sport did matter, a point not universally accepted in the paper's hierarchy in the old days. But, really, it never mattered that much. It was to be treated as a pleasure, a great triviality, for people who were concerned about the world's great crises but had enough perspective to love life too. That bond between writer and reader is incredibly rare and precious in journalism. Keating created one.

It frayed a little in the 1990s, when football began to dominate everything, and sport began to be taken far too seriously rather than not seriously enough. Major competitions became occasions for national hysteria rather than quiet pride. Sports reporting changed to match the mood and Frank was never as comfortable again. He had a lovely wife and two super kids now, and other priorities.

But perhaps, now that world events have become so relentlessly depressing, the notion of sport as fun will return. You can be sure that no one will convey it with more zest than Keating.

Don't be fooled, though. I know of no other case of eavesdropping since that night in Northampton but beneath the bonhomie and devil-may-care exterior there has always been a sense of purpose. He likes to talk of "cribbing" stuff, which actually means relying on his own twin databases: a fantastic memory and an equally fantastic sports library. In journalism, as in sport, it is a mark of greatness to make the skills look easy even when they aren't.

His skills cannot be successfully imitated, though. There will never be another like Keating, which is why it's important that the original keeps writing. The fact is, to use one of Frank's phrases, "we love him dearly". And we need him: his colleagues, his readers and, more than ever maybe, sport itself.